During those existential lacunae at the supermarket checkout when even the curiously austere Hershey’s chocolate seems appealing for a moment, I find myself both drawn to and repelled by the train-wreck of narcissism that is The Oprah Magazine. Whatever might be on the cover this month, I wonder idly to myself. Oh, ...
Started today in a really crappy mood – long story, and not one I’m telling here – and it didn’t improve much. I did want to commemorate something that’s become important to me, though. Sometime in the, oh, the next decade or so, I might finally end up getting some new glasses. My current ones ...
Live 8 was a collision of so many different motivations, there’s been something for every cynic to complain about: that it was all about rock-star ego; that its Anglo-Saxon whitey-whiteness was offensively patronising; that it was a missed opportunity to raise some hard cash; conversely, in a game of bluff and ...
They’ve headed back down since, but for quite some time gas/petrol prices here were kept below three dollars a gallon only by the bulwark of the number system. Apart from one place in Beverly Hills which seemed to leap with abandon from the $2.90s into the $3.20s in order to skip the whole argument, everywhere ...
With a curtsey to Michelle. This has been around and about for such a while that I’m struggling not to feel like the schmuck at the bottom of the pyramid scheme, but, hmm, perhaps the good authors of this site might need a little encouragement. What is the total number of books you own? Not ...
I don’t have good dreams. Never have. Nor do I have ‘bad’ dreams, except on extremely rare occasions. No, what I have are weird, surreal, fucked-up dreams. I also have the usual recurring dreams sometimes about running away from Something Bad, but here’s the thing: I figured out long ago that, though ...
Those store guides of yours. You know, the ones by the elevators. Well, perhaps this hadn’t occurred to you, but they’re actually metaphors. They don’t just tell clueless shoppers what’s on which floor. No, they also metaphorically represent the topology of the store. Cool, huh? So when your store ...
Here’s a simple way to tell if software is any good or not: is it fun to use? If you struggle and wrestle and curse, it’s probably a heap of crap. Probably an expensive heap of crap. I’m finding more fun playing with Google Maps right now than anything for a while. It’s quite spellbindingly ...
Zarquod knows, I’m not (quite) old enough yet for Blimpish Letters to the Editor, but I did send something cranky to the relevant cubby-hole at the BBC about its use in this piece of ‘Edinburgh Fringe Festival’ to refer to the ‘Edinburgh Festival Fringe’. It’s been mostly changed now — ...
It’s striking how many of these are about a desire to escape from life, either chemically or by actually physically running away. But, fucking hell, this one isn’t just a secret; it’s a story. Once it doesn’t seem tasteless to do so, I imagine these will be the stories that are told about that day. ...